ABSTRACT
During twenty years as a behaviour therapist and teacher of behavioural psychology, the prospect that this well-researched and broadly applicable approach might leap to prominence among the therapeutic methods employed by social workers has always seemed tantalizingly close. However, the plain fact is that although each generation of students produces a handful of enthusiasts, and the journals and publication lists now contain much more of this work than hitherto, these methods are still not as widely used as empirical research suggests that they should be. This said, proponents have had another, more general influence on the profession. For example, it is now taken for granted that social workers should plan their interventions, look at contemporary behaviour and what influences it as well as at the historical origins of their clients’ difficulties, that they should set clear and specific goals for themselves, and that they should evaluate their influence as objectively as possible. Behaviour therapy has not been the only source of such ideas, but it has undoubtedly been the major one (Reid and Hanrahan 1980). This is not to be sneezed at, but the more specific aims of equipping all social workers with the knowledge and skills necessary for effective behavioural practice, and for this work to become routine in appropriate cases-as it is to a much greater degree in the United States-have not been achieved. We are still a school. This is regrettable, not least because where social workers do make use of these approaches they tend to do so in an attractively broad and pragmatic way, usually in the context of a range of other practical help and against a backdrop of social deprivation. Social work has, therefore, provided an interesting test-bed for behaviour therapy and cognitive-behavioural therapy in ‘least propitious’ conditions. The results have been convincing (see Macdonald and Sheldon 1992; Scott 1989), but there remains the problem of extending their application. Several difficulties stand in the way of this and these are the concerns of this first chapter. It has four aims:
(i) To take a critical look at the disciplinary context; the occupational world in which cognitive-behavioural therapy is struggling to make its contribution.
